Sarah Palin doesn’t need anyone to defend her, but Obama needs an army of handlers to defend him from himself. (Mark Steyn thinks Obama may be up to two packs a day soon. HT: RobinsonandLong.com).

The protests from Obama and his MSM blocking backs won’t persuade ordinary Americans who instantly recognized Obama’s attack as directed at Palin, and who know he has a record of such junior high trash talk antics (especially the finger gesture.) (See also Michelle Malkin’s blistering rebuke to MSM’s sorority that wants to keep Palin at home with her kids.)

Here’s an e-mail from one of my pals in “the business”:

As a marketer, I can tell you it’s critical to remain on message. Throughout the summer, the Obama campaign has, for the most part, stayed on point and moved away from some of their springtime elitist gaffes. “Obama is a once-in-a-generation kind of leader, and extraordinary communicator, against old-style politics and negativism, a fighter for families,” etc. We’ve all had it (successfully) drilled into our heads.

What’s amazing to me is, since the Palin announcement, just how off message the Obama campaign has been. For 12 days and counting.

He hasn’t had a “good communicator” day since his acceptance speech. Tell me where he’s looked or sounded Presidential?

He keeps comparing himself and his record to his opponent’s VP pick-thereby diminishing himself as POTUS

He’s looking elitist again, with the small town mayor attack

A “fighter for families” and his campaign attacks a woman’s family (with teen pregnancy and a Downs baby)-not good

They’ve now gone negative big-time. That “pig” statement is going to hurt him. And it may hurt him with those Hillary supporters and feminist groups who have bit their tongues up until now.

Obama is hemorrhaging support for a variety of reasons –his paper thin resume is being shredded even further; Joe Biden is a gaffe machine; Bill Ayers helpfully posts a cartoon announcing that violence isn’t necessarily the answer; the world’s inherent risks are continually springing up, as with Kim’s disappearance.

But mostly it isn’t about Obama losing support, but about McCain-Palin gaining support as millions of Americans sense a genuine commitment on the part of the GOP ticket to reversing Washington’s culture of corruption –both Congress’s corruption and MSM’s. The former spends and spends and refuses to do obvious things like authorize drilling offshore or overhaul entitlements. The latter covers for the former with a systemic left-wing bias that explodes again in every news cycle.